Oklahoma City Thunder small forward Kevin Durant (35) has debunked the myth that a player can't make it big in a small market. / David Butler II-USA TODAY Sports

by Sam Amick, USA TODAY Sports

by Sam Amick, USA TODAY Sports

It's late November, and the fact that the wool beanie that sits on top of Kevin Durant's head is there more for fashion than functional purposes means it is still too early in the season to delve into such matters. But as the Oklahoma City Thunder star sits back in his chair at the team's practice facility, his expression having grown longer than those outstretched legs when the conversation turned backward instead of forward or tried to look too far ahead, the topic of his own evolution is more than enough to get him excited again.

Enough with the questions about why he's so happy here in a day and age when NBA stars flock to big cities, or how he's been able to build a booming global brand in the country's 49th largest market. Enough with the Finals loss to Miami that still pains him but has also changed him. Enough about the James Harden trade that hasn't kept the Thunder from getting off to an impressive 15-4 start and he swears doesn't change the end game of winning it all here. And last but certainly not least, enough with the questions about Russell Westbrook and whether their styles can co-exist on a championship club.

Six years in, and the 24-year-old who is already on his way to becoming an all-time great just wants to talk about his growth and the game. With Durant, an old-school star who is changing the school of thought about NBA stars and whether they can shine in small markets, it's always about the game.

"My game, I just want it to keep evolving," Durant told USA TODAY Sports. "I've been more focused on being a better leader, and that's just getting everything I can out of everybody on the floor‚?¶That's the stuff that ignites me. I know the importance of winning, and I know what it takes to win."

The frightening proposition for the league now is that he's already dominating with such ease and grace, this reality that he's still getting better, more well-rounded, and more dangerous by the day. Through 19 games, and with the major adjustment that came with swapping Harden for Kevin Martin in the late-October deal with Houston that so many thought would slow the pace of this small-market story, Durant is posting career high averages in rebounds (8.5 per game), assists (4.4), blocks (1.6) and steals (1.6). And while the scoring of the three-time scoring champ is down marginally in total production (26.5 per game thus far this season as compared to 28 points per game last season), it's only because he's so busy getting better in every other part of his game. As evidenced by career-high percentages from the field (51.4), three-point range (45.5) and from the free-throw line (90.3), Durant has never been more efficient, more impactful, than he is now.

More like Bird than LeBron

Durant is, ironically, closing the gap on the game's best player ‚?? that being his arch-nemesis and friend LeBron James of Miami - by becoming more like him. But it's the game of another all-time great that he's using as inspiration to get to yet another level.

"Larry Bird is a guy I like watching," Durant said with a smile. "I watch film on him all the time. I like his approach to the game when he was playing. When I first started playing the game, my Godfather Taras Brown ‚?? who taught me how to play ‚?? he always was a Larry Bird guy, always used to look up his stats. Brown, nicknamed "Stink" was a trainer at a local gym, Seat Pleasant Recreation Center, just outside of Washington, D.C. where Durant grew up and was his coach there.

"So of course as I got older and started to watch NBATV, Legends games, and of course you hear the stories about the rivalries with him and the Lakers and him and Magic, so I like his competitiveness, how low-maintenance he was, how he just went out there and did his job. He played hard. He played for the love of the game, and that's what I've got."

What he doesn't have and so badly wants, however, is a 50-40-90 season like Bird had in the 1986-87 and 1987-88 seasons ‚?? 50% from the field, 40% from three-point range and 90% from the line. It has only been done 11 times by players who played the large majority of the season, with Dallas' Dirk Nowitzki the last forward to do it, in 2006-07, and Lakers point guard Steve Nash has done it four times.

It's the sort of goal that makes the grind of an 82-game season more manageable, the kind of statistical pursuit that both motivates him individually and raises the bar collectively. Sustained excellence requires projects such as these.

"That's something I want do, something I'm chasing," he admitted. "That's being efficient, taking good shots, taking what the defense gives you, not forcing‚?¶That's what I want to do. I just want to grow in that area."

The pursuit of James and the Heat last June wasn't nearly as rewarding, especially with all the what-ifs that lingered after the Thunder came so close to going up 2-0 before losing four of the next five. But even in defeat, Durant said the foundation for his next step forward was being laid.

It wasn't James' greatness or Miami's trio that left the lasting impression, but the fact that ‚?? even with that sort of star power ‚?? it was the Heat's supporting cast that ultimately played the most pivotal role. And so, as students of the game tend to do, he stole that part of the playbook and approached this season with a whole new perspective.

"(The Heat) didn't win it only because of them (their star trio)," Durant said. "They won it because of the Shane Battiers, the Mike Millers, the Mario Chalmers, the Norris Coles. They won it because of those guys.

"They gave (the role players) confidence from the beginning of the season, and I'm sure being on that stage and having those guys trusting them meant they were able to step their game up. That's the only thing I'm trying to do now."

When the Thunder hosted Harden and his new Houston team on Nov. 28, even Thunder coach Scott Brooks didn't understand Durant's thinking when he pulled him aside to question his decision-making. Passing up an open look to share the ball with Westbrook was one thing, but Durant had dished it to backup point guard Eric Maynor at the free throw line rather than fire away during one symbolic sequence. Durant, as is almost always the case, clued his coach into his master plan.

"Two years ago, he wouldn't have thought that," Brooks said. "He's maturing, and he's seeing other things on the floor that he's never seen before. Those are the moments that, as a coach, you say, 'Oh man, he's getting it.' There are a lot of those moments."

Durant said having everyone involved is important.

"That's just giving guys confidence that will help us down the line," he explained. "I can't win a championship by myself.

"I can score 30 points a game, get eight rebounds, five assists, two blocks. I can do that, and if I do that every game from here on out, and nobody else is getting better, than that's not making us better as a team. I learned that playing in the Finals, just seeing how those guys stepped up and made shots."

Said Brooks, who played 10 seasons as a hard-nosed backup point guard and whose teammates included Charles Barkley, Hakeem Olajuwon, Jason Kidd, and Patrick Ewing and Shawn Kemp: "I've never seen a player like him, just from the skill set. At 6-10, being able to shoot and put it on the floor, post-up. And now he's passing the ball at better efficiency? I don't know. I've been thinking for a long time (about who to compare him to). I don't think there is one (player)."

As for whether Durant will ever be known as the greatest player of his generation, TNT analyst and former NBA forward Charles Barkley offered an emphatic "no" because of James' superior versatility on both ends. But he considers Durant the second-best in the game, with even more room for improvement.

"The one hole in his game that I always criticize is that he's got to learn to post up more," Barkley told USA TODAY Sports. "I talked to Dirk Nowitzki earlier in his career, and said 'the only thing you need to add to your game is to learn to post up.' Because you see, they still guard Kevin with little guys, and he still gets the ball out on the floor.

"And Dirk Nowitzki didn't cross over (into super stardom) until he started posting up, and then that takes little guys out of the game and that's when you can start making your teammates better, because then they have to double you ... (But) he's great for the NBA, and I think it's great for Oklahoma City to have a player of that caliber."

Going global from a small market

The league has seen plenty of smooth superstars before, and the latest comparison to one such fellow came just the other night when Durant's finger-roll in a win at Brooklyn prompted commentators to remember the one and only George Gervin. But Durant is a different sort of smooth, his career a wondrous series of counter-intuitive progressions that have continued in this season that's on pace to be his best.

His lack of strength was supposed to stop him, those gangly arms and frail frame that garnered so much attention when he came out of Texas as the No. 2 pick in 2007 but didn't stop him from becoming the youngest three-time scoring champ in the game's history. The small-market was supposed to frustrate and limit him, yet there he was signing a five-year deal with the Thunder in the summer of 2010, later declaring he never wanted to leave, and now well on his way to becoming one of the most well-recognized figures in pro sports. His occasional clashes with Westbrook were supposed to be their undoing, yet here they are serving as elder statesmen of this team that ‚?? even with their basketball brother opting for the lead role in Houston now - remains elite.

But above the rest, it may be his ability to succeed in both basketball and business on this Oklahoma City stage that's most remarkable. He is the NBA's version of the NFL's Peyton Manning ‚?? beloved on his adopted hometown and embraced by fans and companies worldwide as the sort of humble, wildly-talented star who embodies all that is good about pro sports. And with players like Kobe Bryant and James spending so much of their careers splitting the room of public opinion with their play and personalities, Durant ‚?? who was listed by Forbes as the 34th highest-paid athlete ($25.5 million in total earnings; $12.5 million in salary and $13 million in endorsements before he was given a $5-million raise this season) ‚?? is doing it with a relative approval rating that surpasses both.

A recent Nike shoe event in Oklahoma City sparked the expected response from the Durant faithful, with Thunder fans screaming for their star as if he were Justin Bieber on the upper concourse of the Penn Square Mall. They were there to see their star who has been a fan favorite here since the team arrived from Seattle in 2008, and maybe take a peek at the fifth signature shoe that was being launched too.

"The city of Oklahoma just fits him so well," said Durant's longtime friend and manager, Charlie Bell, who also lives in town. "It fits his reputation and everything he's about. He loves the fans. He loves the people. He can just go out and just be himself here. It's a small city, so you can walk around a little more ‚?? rather than LA or New York. It just fits his personality."

But that's hardly the perfect fit when it comes to building a player's brand. Nike, which heads his list of key sponsors that also includes Gatorade, 2K, Sprint, GE, Skullcandy, and Panini, didn't make Durant one of its three signature players (with James and Bryant) because of his local celebrity. Mass appeal is the name of that game, and their decision to feature Durant as one of their select few athletes whose reach and product pushing goes beyond basketball says everything about their confidence level in him as a client.

It's moments like Sunday in the New York area that are making the company look so smart, as Durant was the main attraction at two more, "House of Hoops" sneaker launch events in the New York area where the crowds and the chaos trumped the reception in Oklahoma by a country mile. It was the continuation of this effort to spread his brand on the largest of platforms, one that began when he signed a seven-year, $58 million Nike deal in 2007 that - like the majority of deals he has done - was negotiated by his former agent, Aaron Goodwin. Durant's brand was improved again last summer when he starred as himself in a Warner Bros. film called Thunderstruck, which was released on DVD this week (the family flic was a modern-day version of Michael Jordan's old "Space Jam" movie in which his talent is mysteriously stolen by a 16-year-old who suddenly becomes the star of his high-school team).

While the Thunder's plight and representation will factor heavily into Durant's ability to continue his commercial ascent, the next few years will certainly be key. His is the next big shoe deal to be up for grabs, as it is set to expire after next season. His current agent is Rob Pelinka, who also represents the likes of Bryant, Harden, and Eric Gordon.

"I don't think the small market is necessarily going to hold him back," said sports marketing analyst David Carter, the executive director of the Sports Business Institute at the University of Southern California. "With top athletes, it's really about performance, it's really about how they communicate, and it's really about their charisma and how they go about it. So whether it's the Aaron Rodgers of the world or Peyton Manning, who has been in multiple small markets and done just fine, you can do it."

Durant's humbleness and genuine manner, while not as provocative as more-controversial athletes, are appealing qualities to plenty of consumers.

"So few athletes of that level of prestige, of that level of success and notoriety, handle themselves the way he does that it's really refreshing," Carter said. "And in this era of athletes behaving badly on and off the court, he's just really very refreshing."

Still, he has a ways to go when it comes to being as widely known as some of the game's bigger names. Entering the Finals, Forbes ‚?? citing Nielsen numbers - reported that while Durant had bested James and Bryant in terms of his popularity among those who knew him (56% liked him compared to 30% for James and 23% for Bryant), the percentage of people who knew him paled in comparison (12% for Durant compared to 63% for Bryant and 46% for James). The evolution continues on that front too, as Nielsen reports increases in his "like" popularity to 66% and his awareness to 18 percent as of September.

The question of whether Durant is an aberration or a trend-setter remains to be seen,though the recent smaller-market-to-bigger-market exoduses of players like Carmelo Anthony (Denver to New York), Deron Williams (Utah to Brooklyn), Chris Paul (New Orleans to the Los Angeles Clippers) and Dwight Howard (Orlando to the Los Angeles Lakers) would suggest he's simply unique. Still, his global experience as a gold-medal winning Team USA member (in both the FIBA championships in 2010 and the Olympics last summer) has helped bring his game to audiences worldwide.

"It's unheard of in this day and age, with superstars," Brooks said of Durant being happy in Oklahoma City. "And he is a true superstar to be so selfless, and so thoughtful of other people around him. He treats everybody like they're the most important person he's met. That is not picking and choosing those moments. He does it every time."

And as Barkley was quick to point out, the Thunder's success - from their first-round playoff appearance in 2010 to a Western Conference Finals appearance in 2011 and the Finals appearance in June - has likely played a major part in Durant's happiness level.

"It's all about talent," Barkley told USA TODAY Sports. "He's a great player, and he's a great kid. He could (succeed) anywhere as great a player as he is. If the team wasn't any good, he might have a totally different mentality."

The endearing part about Durant, of course, is that he seems far less worried about the off-court portion of his program than he does the on-court progress.

Building a championship team

Just because Durant doesn't want to talk about the more-controversial topics doesn't mean he is na√Įve to their existence. He hears it all, from the bashing of Westbrook because of his score-first style to the summer proclamations that the new-look Lakers would unseat the Thunder as Western Conference champs to the widely-held view that the Harden trade was the beginning of the end for him and his team.

And eventually, as he slouches back down in his chair and looks far less interested than when he was discussing the importance of Eric Maynor, he weighs in on those matters too. Westbrook has made the argument less relevant of late, not only because the Thunder are winning but because they have the league's top-ranked offense and Westbrook's assist numbers are up more than three per game (8.7 per this season; 5.5 last).

Still, Westbrook is also taking more shots than Durant -- 17.9 per for Westbrook; 16.6 for Durant -- and will surely take shots from the fans as a result. That was the case on Tuesday night, when former Sacramento forward Chris Webber was highly critical of Westbrook on NBATV and fellow analyst and former player Greg Anthony came to his defense. The ever-loyal Durant rolls his eyes at the discussion that has become a constant hot topic among NBA fans.

"When he was getting killed (by the public last season), he was averaging 25 and eight, 24 and five and five," Durant said. "What are we arguing about? What, that I ain't taking more shots? If I take more shots, then what are you gonna call me? What do you want me to do, man?

"I've learned to just say, 'Man, some people just don't know what they're talking about.' Some people are going to love you, some people are going to hate you. So what? We need Russell to do what he does. We made it to the Finals that way, were three games away from winning a championship."

To the key question of whether Westbrook finds Durant enough, it speaks well of him that ‚?? according to NBA.com - he entered Tuesday night leading the league in assists distributed to one player (53 to Durant). Westbrook also held the second spot, with 47 assists to forward Serge Ibaka, followed by Boston's Rajon Rondo-to-Kevin Garnett combination in third with 45. What's more, the Thunder are seventh in the league in assists per game (22.6) after finishing 30th last season (18.5).

"I know where (Westbrook) loves the ball; he knows where I like the ball, so we're reading each other very, very well this year," Durant said. "He's doing a great job of getting everybody involved all the time, making the right plays, and just being better. His turnovers are down, his assists are up. For any point guard, that's what you want to do. That's the goal."

As for the Lakers and their underwhelming 8-10 record entering Wednesday, Durant isn't ready to underestimate them just yet.

"Everybody is going to be in the mix (in the playoffs) that's supposed to be in the mix," Durant said. "They're a championship‚?¶uh, a championship-caliber organization. You never know. They've got champions on their team. You can't discount a champion."

The Thunder looked destined for a championship of their own until the Harden trade, when the core that had led this relentless progression in the last three seasons was shattered after failed extension negotiations between Harden and Oklahoma City led to the unexpected deal. But Durant, who is quick to laud Martin for the way he has fit in so seamlessly, said the personal aspect of the trade was tougher than the professional.

"Forget the basketball ‚??just to see him leave (was hard)," Durant said. "I was close to his family, his brother, his sisters, his nephew. That was the difficult part, because I get so attached to these guys. I put my heart into it, and I think of all these guys as my brothers."

The Thunder family has changed now, but the goal has not. The title talk, while premature in Durant's eyes only because there's such a long ways to go, remains.

"The hunger is always there," he said. "I play to win, man. I play to win. I play to compete, and I play to win. It's not like I'm satisfied or anything. That's my goal every year, is to get to the top of the mountain. Unfortunately we got there last year but we didn't finish the job, so of course that's my motivation this year ‚?? that's our motivation, is to get back. We know it's a long road."